The amazing thing about LED bulbs is that you can feel the energy being saved - they don't get hot!  Almost 5 years ago, new white-light LEDs were announced.  So today, you'd think we'd be trying to ban compact fluorescent bulbs (ie tuby ones!) let alone incandescent  bulbs (ie old-fashioned ones!). 

Priced Out of the Market...

Spotlights are ideal for LEDs as they tend to be clustered in groups anyway and they do get very hot.  The problem is the cost - we list them here at £8.95 each - here.  A pack is better value but still a significant investment.  You can buy halogen spotlight bulbs for as little as £1.68 each - here.

Undeniably Better Value...

Well let's just consider value for money - we're looking at investing after all.   The LED bulb I noted above states a 50,000 hour life.  Let's be sceptical and say this is best case and a normal case would be 25,000 hours.  Let's also say that we have our lights on for 8 hours a day on average (we're lazy and never turn them off!).  That's 3125 days.  And that's over 8.5 years. 

The cheap halogen spotlight bulb I found states it lasts 2000 hours.  That means 250 days - less than 1 year - even if we're less lazy and remember to turn off so we only use 4 hours a day, it comes to just under 18 months.

So the halogen bulb was 5.3x more expensive but it also lasts 12.5x longer or more.  So you get more than double the value per bulb.

Quality

One of the big stumbling blocks of compact fluorescent bulbs has been the light quality.  Sadly, LEDs don't particularly solve this issue.  They suffer from a low Colour Rendering Index which means the light doesn't look very natural compared to sunlight.

This raises an important question - if we invest in LED lighting today, accepting perhaps, a small loss of quality, will we need to re-invest in 2 years when the quality improves?

The Solution

There are two core problems to address:

1. Buying now may mean missing out on technical improvements in 1 or 2 years or having to reinvest.
2. The upfront cost is more than 5x higher for decent quality bulbs.

I would like to see a scheme along the lines of a rental program - most logically operated by power companies.  The scheme would work as follows:

• You would request a number of bulbs from your electricity provider.
• Total power consumption for lighting would be estimated according to a regulated equation and converted into the number of hours of lighting used.
• You would then know the number of 'bulb-hours' you had used - hours of lighting used divided by total bulbs.
• A charge for each bulb-hour would then be levied.
• When an improvement in bulb-technology emerged, your bulbs would be upgraded.
• When your bulb runs out, it would be replaced at no additional charge.

A possible bulb-hour rate would be £0.0004 or 0.04p (8.95/25000) which would mean that a typical 2 bedroom house with say 20 bulbs at 4 hours per day would spend £0.99 per month for their lightbulbs.  A better rate should be possible for bulb-hours as providers would be purchasing in bulk.  Meanwhile the equivalent 'bulb-hour' rate for halogen bulbs would be £0.0008 (1.68/2000) - still double the cost. 

So this scheme would protect against upgrade costs and make the upfront cost of LED bulbs lower!  And we haven't even mentioned the fact that the bulbs are 20+ times more efficient than incandescents!

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